


Kiz Yan Kapi - The Girl Next Door

by lokilickedme



Category: Original Work
Genre: Adult Content, Awkward Romance, Awkward Sexual Situations, Character based on Can Yaman, Comedy of Errors, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Misunderstandings, POV Alternating, Slow Burn, The Guy Next Door, girl out of her element, misinterpreted sexual orientation, references to past abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-08-26 08:57:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16678537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lokilickedme/pseuds/lokilickedme
Summary: Kiran is an American displaced to an island near Istanbul with her young son under somewhat mysterious circumstances.  Pasha is the boy next door - no, scratch that - Pasha is the unbearably handsome MAN next door, and he's more than happy to help out while Kiran's settling in.  But when truths are revealed about Kiran's not so distant past and Pasha's sexual proclivities, can the pair figure out how to proceed with a solidly platonic relationship?  Or is the whole thing going to blow up in their faces once they both realize neither of them is who they thought they were?





	1. Kadın - The Woman

 

 

 

**~ PASHA ~**

 

 

I have a story to tell, which I'll tell in English because that's the language she speaks and I know she'll swear I'm making things up if I tell it in Turkish...so forgive me in advance for my stilted tongue and loss for words at inopportune times, it's not my native speech.

My name is Pasha Aslan.  I've lived in Amasra near Istanbul on the north coast for most of my life, and it's here, amid the beauty and tradition that is the southern Black Sea, that a woman named Kiran blasted in from the US and tipped everything into the bucket.  I'd say this is a romance of sorts, though it's likely I see it as such simply because it's in my nature to do so.  I'm an artist, we tend to interpret things in such a starlight soaked way, splashing bright colors onto dull canvas and caressing soft shades into shadows.  Was it truly so beautiful as my heart tells my head?

Perhaps it was.  Perhaps I want to remember it that way because I refuse to see her in any less brilliant of a color palette.  The parts that hurt, the shades of grey, have long since been filtered out...though I'll do my best to include them because those are the parts that drive us toward what fate deems a satisfactory conclusion, are they not?  We paint over the mistakes, the crooked lines, the bit that went out of the boundary and ran down the canvas.  We correct what went wrong.  But the mistake is still there, under a new color, we simply can't see it anymore.  We make it go away because we crave beauty and harmony.

Sometimes it takes a few tries to get it right.

 

 _Sevgili Tanrım, nereden başlayacağımı bile bilmiyorum._   Where do I even start?

Spring, 2017.  Beautiful weather, sunny skies, the bluest of blue oceans rimmed on the horizon by lush mountains and manolya blossom trees.  My life is quiet, placid, relaxed.  I work in my home on the coast, drawing and painting, sometimes for an art journal based in Ankara and sometimes for individual commissions.  A late uncle's decided lack of regard for his own children resulted in a cozy inheritance bestowed on me, so I'm able to live the way I choose, work when I wish, do as I want.

I'm grateful to be so blessed.  And I have always felt that in such a blessing comes a responsibility to help those who happen across my path bearing a need.

The beautiful sunlit day that a taxi pulled up outside and a fair haired woman quite literally fell out of it, sprawling on her face on the cobbled street, I knew my blessing had found its need.

 

"Merhaba, ben Pasha, yan odada yaşıyorum. Taşınıyor musun?"

The woman stared at me with such a look of utter blankness and complete distraction that I probably could have walked off and come back later and she wouldn't have remembered I'd been there.  But there was something of a panicked desperation in her eyes that told me I should just start helping and forego asking what sort of help she needed, so I gave the door to her apartment a solid kick.  The building was old, the doors creaky, and by the time I had changed my paint splattered shirt and run across the garden to greet my new neighbors she was already on the verge of tears in trying to open it.  She jumped when it banged against its frame, thanking me hurriedly with a stumbling tongue that I realized was English.

An American.

And she seemed nervous about getting close enough to me to enter her apartment, so I stepped back and smiled as reassuringly as I could, trying to remember the English word for _Welcome_.  I'd learned the language when I was studying abroad, but it wasn't a tongue I used often so the words sounded thick and heavy when I spoke them.

"Blessings on your arrival.  You are living here?"

She cast a furtive glance at me and pushed the boy that had been standing behind her inside, putting him quickly and carefully out of my view.  This woman was afraid.  Not of me specifically, but very much afraid of something or someone, and a sick feeling in my gut told me it was probably my gender that was spooking her.  I am large, tall, scarily imposing I'm told, though few have ever had valid reason to fear me.  But she didn't know I'm no more than  _köpek yavrusu -_  a huge puppy - so I stepped further back and bowed my head to her out of respect for both her territory and her discomfort in my presence.  "I am here to assist, I am next door, 5C.  You may knock any time, please."  I cringed inwardly at the stilted sound of my words, spoken so clumsily and with a tongue so thick I sounded drunk.  The woman didn't understand much of it, I could tell by the confused look of embarrassment on her face.  She was struggling to figure out what to say in response.  But her eyes were looking past me, watching the street and the people moving in the market at the end of it, and it felt best that I excuse myself and leave her to her settling in.

The boy ducked his head out and waved to me, a sweet smile lighting his enormous blue eyes.  His face made me think of the wicked baby angels in Raphael paintings and I waved back to him as I backed away.  He couldn't have been more than six.  And he and his mother - I assumed she was his mother - were here in Amasra, getting out of a taxi with no luggage, clutching only a key to the apartment in her hand and a wobbly-headed toy in his.

So many questions I had.  So little chance of having them answered.

I bowed to the woman and left, muttering a clumsy _Allah keep you,_ though I realized she probably found it a strange thing to say.

But I couldn't stop thinking about that desperately afraid look in her eyes and how she so bravely stood in front of her boy without moving until I backed away, and how it clashed in my head with the almost comical stumble she took getting out of the taxi.  And as I finished my work for the day with a distracted mind, I changed my shirt again and stared at the wine rack in my kitchen, wondering what kind she might like.

Because this woman had an off-center beauty that I wanted to paint and a story that I wanted to hear.  But I was going to have to work on my English first, so I downloaded Duolingo and wandered around my apartment listening to an owl telling me how to ask for the bathroom, relearning all the things I'd forgotten.

_Hello, I am Pasha, I would like you to get naked so I can paint you please._

_Hello, welcome to Turkey, I am your neighbor, my English is bad so please forgive if I fuck up._

_Hello, I bring wine.  I hope you like._

I chose the Pasaeli and sat it on the countertop, staring at it with a nervous stomach that I hadn't felt in a very long time.

 

_Hello._

_I am Pasha, and I am lonely._  

 

_I would like to be your friend._

 

 

**_To be continued..._ **

 

 

 

 

 


	2. The Guy With The Wine

 

 

 

 

**~ Kiran ~**

 

 

I sat in the floor in my new kitchen, in my new home, in my new life in this new place, trying to find a way to deal with the crushing _newness_ of it all.

Funny how new sometimes equals strange and utterly terrifying.

My son Milo was fanning my knee to quell the stinging from the ugly scrape I'd gotten falling out of the taxi cab into the street, alternately blowing on it and telling me to sit still and he'd fix me.  With what, neither of us had any idea - there was nothing in the house and we'd brought nothing with us.  It's like that sometimes when you leave in a hurry.

We'd make do somehow.

We'd already met one neighbor - a huge man with the face of a supermodel and an unusually copper colored beard that had come from the apartment next door while I was struggling to open my own solidly stuck front door - and he had opened it for me with a resounding kick from an enormous boot.  I appreciated the help, but cozying up to strange men in a strange place where I didn't speak a single word of the language was so far down on my priority list that it was practically nonexistent as a to-do.

Men weren't on the agenda.  Not in any form or fashion.  Not even ones that looked like a perfect poster boy for the Ottoman Empire.

What was his name again?

I thought he might have said it at some point but I wasn't sure; he'd shifted to a struggling sort of stuttering English once he realized I wasn't local but his accent was so thick and heavy I only caught a few words.  I was too distracted to try to sort any of it in my head, anyway...there was a crowded market row at the end of the street and the presence of all those people was scaring the shit out of me.  Ever since my troubles back home I'd become wary of crowds, of men, of people in general.

And here I was, thousands of miles from everything I was familiar with, being stared at by a gigantic man with eyes so dark they were almost black, with a bustling throng of strangers milling around just a block away.

 _He's not here_ I reminded myself. _He doesn't know where you are_.

 _He_ being my husband, Milo's father.  I hadn't really started yet getting used to the _ex_ part, probably because it wasn't even close to final.  I had filed for divorce and then I had to leave before the papers had even been picked up off my attorney's desk.  Again, it's like that sometimes when you're in a hurry to vanish.

The pathetic reality of my situation was that he would literally kill me if he ever found me, and he'd take Milo and tell him his mommy didn't want him.  The first part was a scenario I didn't want; the second was one I couldn't accept.  And I wouldn't, because if the second one happened, he would definitely have to have done the first one.

And so we ran, and a friend - maybe the one person in the world that I trusted anymore - had arranged travel to some random place where odds were good he would never look for us.  She secretaried at a travel agency and had procured tickets and paperwork for me and Milo without our names being attached to the transaction, and within two hours my sweet little guy and I were hustling through LaGuardia airport with nothing on us but my purse and his ratty stuffed cat.  A couple of hours later he was sleeping with his head on it on a flight to Turkey, calm and brave, while his mom sat beside him trying her damndest not to cry in front of a plane full of strangers, headed for a strange land.

 

The guy from next door seemed nice enough, but he was a man, wasn't he?  I hoped he had a wife who just wasn't home yet, because living next to a single man didn't seem at all safe in a place where safety was the whole point.  He had given Milo what looked like a sincere smile, but it sent a jolt up my spine, and I didn't even feel bad about my rudeness as he backed away from us with his hands held up in front of him.  I'd seen that gesture before and it was rarely ever the truth...no man is harmless.

Not one.

So when he knocked on the door a couple of hours later with a bottle of wine and that same kneeshaker of a smile, it was a hell of a difficult undertaking not to slam the door in his face and start looking for a new place to live.  But this little apartment was our sole option.  It was part of the package deal my friend had worked out for us, one of those _So you need to disappear fast, huh?_ arrangements that you see in crime dramas on TV.  The sort of thing you know probably happens but you've never actually known anyone it happened to.  The sort of thing that people do when they're so desperate there are no other options.

I didn't know how much the entire thing had cost and I didn't care - I'd given the friend my private account information and she'd taken care of it all for me.  As far as I knew it had taken every penny in that account - money I'd been quietly siphoning off my husband for months, mine and Milo's getaway money - but that was okay, this was what it had always been there for.  I would find a job and support us from this point on.  We were friendless, family-less, untethered, and on our own.

Pretty terrifying, actually.

And now this big friendly guy the size of a forklift was standing in front of me with a bottle of wine, holding it out to me with a reassuring smile that looked so real I might have invited him in if the situation had been different.

"Merhaba.  Hello again," he said, and it sounded almost like he was talking around a mouth full of bubblegum.  "I am Pasha, we meet.  I kick your door."

"Yeah.  Yeah, thanks, I appreciate that."  _Pasha._   He was still holding the bottle out to me so I took it, carefully avoiding touching his fingers.  It was some kind of pink wine with a beautiful label all written in Turkish, and I realized I hadn't had anything to eat or drink since we'd landed in Istanbul.  I'd been too busy wandering around the mostly empty apartment, sobbing as quietly as I could so Milo wouldn't hear me.  "I don't have any glasses, but thank you, it looks delicious."

He squinted at me for a second, obviously translating my words in his head.  I made a drinking motion and he immediately smiled, putting his finger up in _Wait one second_ gesture before stepping over the low hedges and heading back to his own front door.

"No, no wait, I didn't mean - "

He simply waved back at me over his shoulder, not listening to my protest.  Damn language barrier - he must have thought I meant I wanted to drink it now.  But as he trotted across the space between my front door and his, I realized this was my chance to draw a boundary line.   _Here's your opportunity, go back inside and lock the door._ All my self preservation instincts screamed at me to do it.  My common sense begged me to listen.

But for some reason I didn't.  I stood there and waited, and when he returned a minute later with three glasses and a second smaller bottle, I wasn't quite as suspicious of his sweet smile as I had been.

"Is for boy," he said, pushing the bottle toward me.  "Is like...cherry?  Meşrubat.  Cola, like Coke."  He pointed to Milo, who had wandered out and was standing behind me, holding onto my leg and peering out from between my knees.  "He will like."

I nodded, feeling a bit overwhelmed - sorting his chopped sentences in my head was making me feel confused and off balance, and his close proximity was making me unsettled and nervous.  I wasn't sure what to do but I didn't have to make any decisions, thank god, because before I had a chance to say something awkward like _Thank you, you can go home now_ he stepped over the hedge again and motioned toward a little wrought iron table in his front garden.  He was already to it and pulling the chairs out to brush the leaves off them before I could decide whether or not to follow him, and when he turned around and smiled at me from across the lawn, motioning for me to come, I looked down at Milo for an answer.  The little guy was a good judge of people and he didn't seem the slightest bit nervous about our neighbor.  A good sign.

"You want some cherry cola?"

His excited squeal was enough of an answer for me.  He'd been so good, so patient, so cooperative through it all so far, his happiness suddenly seemed like the most important thing in the world and whatever the dark red stuff in the bottle was, there was no way I was going to deprive him of it regardless of who brought it.  I stepped over the hedge and let Pasha take the bottles from my hands so I could pick Milo up.  And then we followed him to the little table, where he deftly uncorked the wine with strong fingers and poured me a glass, doing the same for Milo with the weird cola stuff before looking to me for approval.  I took a sip, trying hard not to meet his gaze while he stared at me, waiting for me to indicate whether I liked it or not.  The wine was very sweet, like sugared berries.  I nodded and smiled and he finally poured himself a glass.

"You are welcome to Amasra," he said quietly after a long silence where we did nothing but sip our wine and stare off into the distance, toward the lights twinkling along the coast.  "Is good place.  You will like."

And then he sat back, his big body relaxing as he stretched out in the little wrought iron chair, long legs extended out to the side so they wouldn't crowd my space on the other side of the table.  The sky was beginning to darken and I watched the harbor lights reflect off the black of his eyes while I sipped my wine, carefully paying close attention to how my head handled the foreign alcohol.  At the first sign of a tipsy heat behind my eyes I would put the glass down and excuse us on the premise of putting Milo to bed; getting drunk, no matter how enticing of an option it might be, wasn't something I could risk right now.  Not in the presence of a stranger who looked like he could toss me over his shoulder with one hand and carry me into his house with very little effort.

But he simply sat there staring off toward the water, and the ease and relaxed demeanor of his entire body, his face, his posture, made me feel calm and safe enough to stay until the sun went down and the street lights flickered on.  Milo had fallen asleep in my lap, and when Pasha stood up and held his hands out with a questioning quirk to his eyebrow, I let him take him from my arms and carry him across to our apartment where he kicked the door open...and stepped inside before I could stop him.

_Oh...oh damn._

 

 

**_To be continued..._ **

 


	3. A Consummation of Blankets

 

 

 

 

**~KIRAN~**

 

 

He looked around, his eyes falling to the emptiness of the front room.  There wasn't even a sofa to put Milo down on.

"I'll take him now, thank you."

He gave me my son and we stood there awkwardly, me watching him carefully, him looking around with a steadily worsening expression of disapproval as the extent of my patheticness became obvious.  The front room had a worn out armchair with a small table next to it.  That was it.  He turned in a circle, silent and huge in the small room, and I realized that I should be feeling very worried about him being in my house - but when he stopped looking at the lack of furnishings and brought his dark eyes back to me, there was a softness and compassion in them that took away my barely contained flight impulse.

"You have nothing," he said quietly, his thick accent and gentle voice making me feel funny.  I hugged Milo close to me, oddly comforted by his snuffly snore against the side of my neck.

"Yeah, I've got to go find a few things tomorrow, I haven't had time yet."

"You have things for tonight?"  He pointed toward the bedroom door but didn't take a step from where he stood.  "I have blankets if you need.  Pillow. Pamajas?"

That word hit me weird and I realized he was trying to say  _pajamas_.

"We'll be fine, thank you."

He frowned but didn't argue.  The truth was that the single bed in the single bedroom was barely big enough for me and Milo both, and I'd taken the threadbare sheets off it to hang as a makeshift curtain over the window.  We would be sleeping on a bare mattress until I could get something to replace it...and we definitely didn't have pajamas.

Pasha nodded, but the look on his face told me he didn't believe me on the fine part.  But thankfully he didn't argue, and when he bowed his head and touched his fingertips to his brow and murmured something that sounded like  _goodnight and Allah protect you_ , my sigh of relief was strangely tempered with a weird sort of melancholy that didn't sit easy in my stomach.

It hadn't escaped my notice that he was beautiful.  Even my current anti-male disposition couldn't keep me from seeing and acknowledging that.  And now that I'd gotten a good long look at him, I realized he was just about the most shockingly gorgeous human being I'd ever laid eyes on - dark eyes, dark hair with copper streaks the same color as his heard, nice plush looking lips...big body...heavily muscled, with thick arms and broad shoulders.  Obviously ridiculously strong.

 _This could be a good thing_  I thought as he shut the door behind him.   _Big strong guy in close proximity.  Make friends with him, maybe he'll keep an eye on the place._   It couldn't hurt to have something as huge as that to hide behind, could it?  And Milo was a strong motivator for protective instincts, with his angel face and endearing lisp.  He was small for his age, another reason people were quick to get attached to him.  And Pasha had already brought him a soda.  It probably wouldn't take long for him to fall in love with the little guy.

I felt a bit villainous for wanting to use both my son and my neighbor to get the security I needed, but I was doing a lot of things lately that I never thought I would do.

And I would do anything it took to protect my son.

Running out the door and hustling the both of us into a taxi to catch our flight to the Middle East with no belongings, not much money, and no clue where we were headed was probably just the start of a long list of those things.

 

I was putting Milo down on the bed and tucking my jacket around him for a blanket when a knock at the door set off all my panic alarms.  The police was my first assumption - that he had found us already and sent the authorities to get us and hold us until he could come and drag us back home.  A cold dread froze me where I stood like a deer in headlights, next to the bed where my sleeping son was snoring softly, not a thought in my head as to what to do to protect us.

And then I heard his voice.  _Pasha._

"Is me, next door.  I have blankets."

I didn't want to open the door - I was tired, the stress of the long trip and the narrow escape and the ungodly rush of it all was starting to sit really heavy on my nerves and I just wanted to sleep for as long as I could before I had no choice but to get up and start getting our lives in order.  The wine had settled my body a little but hadn't done a lot for my head, and it wasn't near enough to take me past slightly sleepy into the realm of the truly relaxed.

What I needed was something stronger.

And for the beautiful man from next door to just put the blankets down and leave quietly.  I didn't want to see him again, not while I was feeling so cranky and vulnerable and powerless, not until I'd had some time to get used to where I was and start doing the things that needed doing.  I hoped he would set whatever he had against the door and take the hint and walk away, go back to his place next door, spend the rest of the evening watching TV or flexing in front of the mirror or whatever his sort got up to at night.  Anything, so long as he didn't knock again.

Which was what I thought he'd done after I'd waited a good five minutes on the assumption that he was smart enough to figure out the day was over for me as far as socializing.  Having a drink with him in the front yard was the extent of how far I was willing to stretch my graciousness until I'd gotten at least a handful of good sleep hours under my belt, because even lovely-to-look-at creatures like him weren't exempt from my mood once it went sour.  He might even be more likely to fall victim to it, since I was feeling a little bit resentful of his stupid face, knowing that he probably woke up looking like that every morning at six a.m. while I staggered out of bed at nine in need of a good spackling job and a coat of fresh paint just to avoid getting arrested.

I sorta hated him already, despite the good wine he'd shared and the obviously sweet nature just oozing out of him.  Dammit.  My feelings were still raw and touchy from everything I'd just escaped, I didn't need him making me like people again.

Male people in particular.

A quick look out the front window showed me an empty porch devoid of gigantic ridiculously attractive neighbors.  There was a soft breeze that smelled like magnolia when I finally bravened up enough to open the door, and bless his great big intuitive heart, he'd done exactly what I'd hoped he would do.  There was a pile of blankets and two big fluffy pillows folded neatly on the front step, with a bottle of what looked suspiciously like whiskey and a cut crystal glass laying on top of them.

This guy was going to be a _really_  good neighbor.  I felt like a shit for mentally hating on him for being pretty and an even bigger shit for being so easily swayed into liking him again with something as simple and shallow as a bottle of booze.  It was obvious I had no business being around people yet.  But damn if I didn't suddenly feel a whole lot better at the thought of that whiskey and those clean sheets.

I was bending over with my first authentic smile in days to pick everything up when a sudden movement to my left startled me and I screamed, slamming my hand over my mouth just about halfway through it.  Pasha was sitting there on the edge of the little porch with his long legs stretched out, leaning back against the house next to the window.

"What are you - why are you - ??"

He just sat there staring at me, those gorgeous black eyes glittering in the lights from the harbor.  The look on his face was kind, but there was something else in that look too, and when his gaze fell just briefly to my throat I felt like I probably shivered a little.  I was holding his blankets and pillows and a bottle of something potent and an expensive looking crystal glass clutched against my chest, for god's sake - and I was being rude to the man who had brought them to me out of the goodness of his heart.

A heart that I almost believed I could actually see beating, just to the left of the open front of his shirt.  There was a powerful looking chest just barely contained in there and I may have sucked in my breath just a little.  A man's chest was nothing less than kryptonite for me.

_Don't look at him._

"Is consummation porch," he said while I stood there at a complete loss for words, trying desperately to get my mind out of his shirt and figure out what the hell he'd just said.  He gestured around him to show me he was sitting right at the spot where his half of the house connected onto mine.  I hadn't noticed yet that we lived in the same structure, probably separated by a single wall.  I'd have to figure out which room that wall went through.

"I think you mean communal.  It's a  _communal_  porch.  Consummation is something...entirely different.  Yeah."

He nodded and his eyes lowered again, to the stack of blankets in my arms.  I was clutching the bottle like it was my key to the kingdom and he smiled a gentle little smile, full of a dizzying mix of compassion and suggestive humor every bit as potent as what I assumed was in that bottle.  Oh damn.  I had to look away quickly, because he sure as hell didn't seem like he was going to.

"Thank you for this.  These.  All of it.  I'll bring them back tomorrow."

He shook his head, holding out one big hand in a stop gesture.  "You keep.  I sleep outside most nights."

"You sleep outside?"

"Mm.  Sky is nice.  Is warm.  Sea makes me sleep."  He put his hands next to his head in a slumbering gesture and somewhere inside my brain I heard my own survival instincts freak right the hell out, screaming at me to get away from him, to go inside the house where I couldn't hear his softly seductive voice speaking in adorably stilted English about the sky and the sea, to stop looking at his face and wondering how a person gets eyes that black, to stop being in awe of his beautiful soft looking golden skin and his thick dark hair and that impossibly copper colored beard and how it might feel rubbing against my -

"I better go, Milo will be scared if he wakes up in a strange place without me."

He dipped his head, both hands coming to his forehead in a gesture that looked oddly respectful, then he put one hand over his heart and smiled at me.

"He is good boy, I hope he is happy here.   _I_ _yi geceler_."

Damn.  So many damns.

I assumed _I_ _yi geceler_ probably meant goodnight, so I gave him a little night-night wave with the bottle still clutched in my fist.  Yeah, once I cracked into that thing my night was going to get a whole lot better.  I'd be out like a lightbulb with a b-b gun pointed at it before I finished an inch of whatever it was.  I wouldn't be thinking about my beautiful neighbor's beard and I wouldn't be worried about how I was going to make this disruption of life work for me and Milo, and best of all I wouldn't be obsessing over the mess that brought us here in the first place.  I would sleep, and I'd feel a little bit safer with the knowledge that Pasha was outside, stretched out on the grass, watching over my world while I snored.  I wouldn't think about any of that.  I couldn't...Milo would be sharing the bed with me and I'd be damned if I'd let him see me bawl over the complete cockup of our past, and even more damned if I'd risk him waking up to hear his mother moaning in her sleep.

"You never say name."

I'd just kicked the door open - it jammed, apparently every time it shut - but his voice stopped me where I stood before I'd taken a step into the house.  "What?"

"You.  Name, you."  He was gesturing back and forth between us and I knew he knew I wasn't getting it.  He touched his chest.  "Pasha.  You?"

Oh.  "Um, Kiran.  I'm Kiran."  I hadn't thought about names, about assuming new identities for myself and Milo.  Was I supposed to do that?  "I, uh...yeah.  Kiran."

He nodded, and the very slight hitch to his eyebrow told me he knew something wasn't right about all of this, about us being here.  But he only smiled, and in that smile he told me things that his broken English would fail miserably at if he tried to speak them.

I just couldn't understand the words yet.

 

 

_To be continued..._

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
